Sometimes I just can’t get too angry about some particularly insane rant from a denialist. In this case, HIV/AIDS denialist, scientific medicine denialist and all-around crank Mike Adams rants about the prospect of food sterilization by irradiation:

Let’s be blunt about this: The corporations running this country (which also run the U.S. government) want the U.S. food supply to be dead. They don’t want foods to be used as medicines, and they sure don’t want the natural medicines found in foods competing with their own patented pharmaceutical medicines (that just happen to earn them a whole lot more money than any food ever did).
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The FDA, for its part, has for many decades conducted its natural medicine censorship campaign, whose only purpose is to deny the People access to accurate information about the healing properties of natural medicines found in foods and herbs.
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I believe we must keep our food supply fresh and alive. (Sounds kinda obvious, huh?) And if there’s a little extra bacteria on the spinach, it’s nothing that a healthy body can’t handle anyway. Take some probiotics and avoid antibiotics, and you’ll be just fine. E. Coli is really only a threat to the health of individuals who have had their immune systems (or intestinal flora) destroyed by pharmaceuticals in the first place. There’s nothing wrong with some living organisms in your milk, on your almonds or on your spinach. Wash your food, get plenty of sunlight and avoid using antibiotics.

The human body is NOT a sterile environment. To try to make our food supply sterile is insane, and anyone who supports the irradiation of the food supply is, in my opinion, supporting a policy of genocide against the American people. To destroy the vitality of the food supply is a criminal act of such immense evil that it stands alongside the worst crimes ever committed against humanity.

You see, it’s not enough for them to poison our water (fluoride), poison our children (vaccines) and lie to us about the sun (skin cancer scare stories). Now they want to destroy our foods… and thereby take away any natural medicine options that might actually keep people healthy and free. Remember: A diseased population is an enslaved population.

I’ll just mention one thing that has elluded our hysterical little health ranger. Irradiation does not “kill” your food. In fact, if a cell is living a “lethal” dose of radiation doesn’t necessarily make the cell keel over and die. All it does is cause enough DNA damage so that cells can no longer reproduce. The bacteria are still there, which is different than sterilization by washing or autoclaving, they’re just incapable of reproduction, and guess what? Strawberries aren’t particularly mitotically active after they’ve grown and ripened. I have cells in my lab called feeder cells – fibroblasts irradiated so they can no longer divide – that are used to maintain embryonic stem cells in a pluripotent state that stay alive for weeks in culture. Irradiation of humans, for instance, is only lethal when cells that are susceptible to irradiation, like GI and marrow cells, are killed. Maybe too subtle a point for Adams, but I digress.

This is such a wonderful rant and I can’t get angry over it because it just demonstrates how completely insane this particular denialist is. He doesn’t understand electromagnetic radiation and even has a piece up from a colleague on the the evils of microwaving (read cooking your food). The microwave is an evil Nazi invention that is responsible for everything from obesity to erectile dysfunction! Food irradiation is the greatest crime ever committed in history! The government wants to kill us all using clean cooked food!

Comments

Doesn’t sound like Mr Adams will be swimming in the gene pool for too long. Anyway, what’s he complaining about? He can buy and eat anything he wants. He can refuse “allopathic” medicine if he wants. He can create a website/write a book/annoy his friends with his ideas.

You think he’d be living in a log cabin in Montana with no running water, growing his own vegetables and using his own stool for fertiliser the way he talks.

I agree that Mike can rage against the system, corporations and the government. He has that freedom. Food irradiation is nothing more than a tool to be utilized for food safety of products. The first line of food safety should always be proper handling and cooking techniques. I worked for Titan/SureBeam and built electron-beam and x-ray systems using linear accelerators. Safe–shut the power off and there is no residual radiation. The only byproduct of e-beam irradiation process is ozone that reconverts to O2 and does not affect the upper atmosphere. I licensed a facility with LA County’s Air Quality Management District approval for 4 linacs. The LA AQMD was is not know for rubber stamping permit approvals. Funny, these same systems are used to sterilize medical products and devices at dose levels over 10 – 20 times levels used for food irradiation. I have never heard of a complaint or protest against medical sterilization by the anti-irradiation advocates or patients. I have worked around radiation for 30 years and still work with linear accelerators.

Well, there you have it. Your brain is obviously so completely addled after all this time that you can no longer see The Truth! Hmmm… I guess my having been a ham radio operator for 4 decades has likely had a similar effect on me. It’s good to know that there are still clear thinkers like Mr Adams out there looking after our interests

if a cell is living a “lethal” dose of radiation doesn’t necessarily make the cell keel over and die. All it does is cause enough DNA damage so that cells can no longer reproduce. The bacteria are still there, … , they’re just incapable of reproduction …
too subtle a point for Adams, but I digress.

Too subtle for me previously too. Thanks for the information. Food irradiation may not be as bad as I thought.

I propose a challenge for Adams: He shall obtain and consume a culture of e.coli or salmonella. Try to find a strain that wont do any serious harm, but will have him confined to an area within ten-second sprint of his toilet for a while. If he is right, then he has nothing to fear from food poisoning.

This is slightly off topic, but I feel the urge to post it whenever somebody freaks out over “Frankenfoods” without understanding the science at hand. It is a quote from the 7th edition of Human Genetics: Concepts and Applications, by Ricki Lewis.

Some objections to GM food arise from a lack of knowledge. A public opinion poll in the United Kingdom discovered, for example, that a major reason citizens avoid GM foods is that they do not want to eat DNA! One British geneticist wryly observed that the average meal provides about 150,000 kilometers (about 93,000 miles) of DNA.

Some objections to GM food arise from a lack of knowledge. A public opinion poll in the United Kingdom discovered, for example, that a major reason citizens avoid GM foods is that they do not want to eat DNA!

Fools!!!!! Don’t they know that DNA is just a load of hype? DNA is just a scientifascist plot to convince people that science determines what our kids look like and some of their traits. Trying to lure simple folk away from the obvious trooth that Odin did it. I am the way that I am, because Odin made me this way. My boys are the way they are, because Odin did it. Look for the money, I always say. Just how much was spent on that wild goose chase, mapping the human genome?

It’s sad to see reasonably skeptical people taken in by such an obvious, nefarious, SCIENTIFASCIST plot.

I do however, support irradiating our food. Everybody knows that only radiation kills those UN/extra-terrestrial mind control devices.

Mike Adams, you are a COMPLETE IDIOT!!! Someone in MY family almost died from the harmless e-coli!!! As he most ignorantly stated: “E. Coli is really only a threat to the health of individuals who have had their immune systems (or intestinal flora) destroyed by pharmaceuticals in the first place…” is a total absurdity. Get a clue you moron and try a little research before you open that feted and festering hole in head – the one with teeth in it – as you obviously have others that facilitated the leakage of what little brain you started out with. If your so sure that e-coli is only harmful to those with a compromised immune system (or pharmaceutically mediated killing of gut flora – if you even understand the true meaning of the terms) then I suggest you get a nice dose of 0157:H7 (all it takes is about 100 organisms, pal) and put it under your tongue and SUCK ON IT for a while, you’ll change your tune REAL QUICK!!! At least try to complete third grade before you open your pie-hole again you ignorant, mentally deficient jackass!

I was just reading the first half of that article (wandered over from Alternet) and was shaking my head, when I got to the phrase “life force properties” of food I decided to plug “irradiation of food” into the search box here at sciblogs. And of course this was the first hit. It’s always nice to know precisely the real science that these kooks are ignoring. Thanks!